Category Archives: White

Dull. Plain.
Yep. Bor-RAINBOW.
You saw it! A rainbow cake! This feller took forever to create, but it was so much fun to play with as well.
The batter was simple and delicious, very moist. However, I don’t know if it was just me, but I followed the recipe to a “T” but despite the toothpick coming out clean, the tops of the cakes felt almost unbaked, so I baked them five minutes longer than the recipe recommended. This didn’t dry the cakes out or cause them to be darkened on the edges, but the tops remained the same. Not sticky, but they left a divot. I just leveled them off and was fine and good, I just thought it was odd. I blame the butter.

Wait, what am I saying? Don’t blame the butter! The butter did nothing wrong!
In order to maintain even layers, I took the batter and weighed it in a separate bowl. This made more dishes, so I would weigh the mixing bowl first, write that weight down, then make the batter and weigh it, then take off the weight of the bowl. The batter, for me, weighed 3 pounds 10 ounces, so when that was divided into six portions, each would be 9.6667 ounces, or 9.7 ounces.

I don’t like math, but I do it for you all. You can thank me later.

Then I have to make this

exponentially

important statement. I bolded it, but if you could do me a favor and imagine some flashing lights around it, that would be greatly appreciated.

DO NOT USE LIQUID FOOD COLORS ONLY USE GEL FOOD COLORS!

If you use liquid food colors, it would offset the delicate balance of liquid to dry ingredients in the batter, thereby messing with the baked product. In other words, it might make it too liquidy in the end with the amount of food color you might use.

Oh, gel food colors are probably about 5 or 6 times more concentrated than liquid food colors, so you will need a lot less. That’s important too. You can find them for cheap at your local craft store in the baking isle, or I get mine at a bakery supply store. You’ll find that they are super easy to use.
I’m telling ya, man, if you don’t use gel food colors, your layers will not be as blinding as these.

All in all, its a pretty normal sized cake once the layers are all stacked up, equalling to about the size of a tall double layer cake. Its not like you baked the amount of batter for three cakes, its basically the amount of a normal cake batter. Where is all this verbage and analyzing coming from? These colors are messing with my brain. Just think, if you make two of these cakes…
That would probably be my reaction too.
Even though the cake wasn’t that tall, it did require a lot of frosting, so I applied a relatively thin amount in between each layer. I do have to admit, I really don’t like massive amounts of frosting, so this amount was adequate, and I sliced really small slices. The one in the picture is an exception. Or was it? Don’t judge.
Now listen. Once your layers have been assembled, don’t dump on a massive amount of frosting and cover the cake right away. You might get crumbs to cover your cake, and we want to deceive! Any indication of color might make your cake followers curious! They may question! To prevent that, spread on a small amount of frosting all over the cake. Like in the picture, you will still see the cake layers pretty well. Now stick your cake in the freezer for about five or ten minutes.

Trust in Clara, you must.
It’s called a ‘crumb coat’, basically, the frosting will catch and hold onto the straying cake crumbs and hold them onto the cake when you frost. By sticking it in the freezer, the crumb coat becomes hard because of the butter, and so the crumbs are cemented to the thin layer of frosting, and they will not invade your lovely white buttercream which you will spread on the outside. The result? Boring, inconspicuous cake. Perfect method of deceit.
Bright and shiny. Ultra colorful. This cake is about as delicious as it is saturated in color. It will make a great birthday cake! Or if you get that sudden urge to make something wacky.

Method
Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Oil and line how ever many 9” cake pans you have (I have three and I just reused them).

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Cream the sugar and butter, then add the egg whites (I cracked them all into one bowl) and add them a little at a time. Add the vanilla and mix until fully incorporated. Then, alternating between wet and dry, add the milk and flour mixture in two parts.

Divide the batter amongst 6 bowls (I did it by weight. Weigh your mixing bowl before you begin adding ingredients and then subtract the weight of the bowl from the final measurement after the batter is completed. Divide that number by six and add that weight of batter to each bowl), and then whisk a fair amount of the appropriate food color into each bowl. Keep in mind that the color of the unbaked batter will be the color of the baked batter. Pour into the pans and bake for 15 minutes each.

When you remove them from the oven, let them rest on the cooling rack, in the pan, for ten minutes. Then flip, cover, and stash them in the fridge to cool quickly.

Method
1. In a heavy duty mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip butter until fluffy, about one minute.
2. Add in powdered sugar, about 1/2 cup at a time, until thoroughly combined.
3. Add in vanilla extract and milk. If the frosting is too thick, add in more milk, one tablespoon at a time, until frosting achieves your desired consistency.
4. Frost!

I have a cupcake tin, well, two cupcake tins. Combined, they yield 24 cupcakes, cupcake-sized brownies, muffins, tassies, what-have-you. These cupcake tins are very special to me. See, we’ve had them for as long as I can remember, ever since I was super little, and probably even longer than that. They bring back memories of making box mix blueberry muffins with my older sister, Christine (shout out!), and me licking the bowl, and then me BEGGING to lick the spatula, and then me wailing to crack the eggs. Everything that included me in the baking process made me feel important. I was very meticulous about it, I always wanted to do the whole shibang, but my sister was really the expert in that field. She could make a box of brownies seem like they were made by Ina Garten or Julia Child. I loved those things. Anyway, these humble cupcake tins are nostalgic for me every time I get them out. Sure, they are a bit beaten up, sure they are a bit warped from the heat. But that gives them character, and it makes each little batch of cupcakes special. It’s having little things like these that make a house a home, and a cupcake a taste of childhood; love in a wrapper.

Why am I getting sentimental? Well, one of my favorite box mix cakes has to be Funfetti from Pillsbury. You remember Funfetti? The fun white cake with colorful flecks of rainbow sprinkles (or jimmies, depending on where you are from) baked all through it. It’s sweet and light, perfect for cakes or cupcakes.

I decided upon myself to make my own. It was a simple idea, really, just find the right white cake recipe and add sprinkles to it. However, what makes funfetti special has to be those gosh darned…

SPRINKLES! Yay! Use this recipe for white cake (its flavor profile is just about right, in my book) and add to it four tablespoons of sprinkles, jimmies, colored dots, children’s laughter, giggles, and puppies. Okay, maybe not the puppies, but you get it.

Stirring it all in is fun too. It almost reminds me of the time I fell off the stoo-Moving on now.

All in there! It looks like Funfetti batter already! From here, you can bake it into a cake, but then you could just make cupcakes.

That’s what I did. I ordered these from Amazon, aren’t they cute? They came from a company called “The Confectionary House”, check ’em!

They bake up rather flat, but what are you gonna do? That’s notorious for cupcakes. I will leap and cheer and giggle and scream with delight the day my cupcakes turn out round on top. Pinky promise, and if I don’t, tell me when it happens, and I will embarrass myself. I promise.

Good night what have I gotten myself into…

Top with buttercream (or seven minute frosting) and finish with sprinkles.

If your a sophisticate, you eat them with a fork. But, I’m not much a sophisticate. I came into the den to write my blog post and my mom commented on the buttercream that somehow ended up on my forehead.

Who says it can’t be? lot of people are skeptics when it comes to white cake, and why not? All the white cake I’ve had has often been bland, dry, flavorless. Everything that kind of lives up to its light texture. However, this is a recipe that was from the school in Dallas’ cookbook who’s recipe that I stole (I’m silly). It was called “Grandma’s White Cake”, and the description said that it was the best ever, so I took out my notepad app and hastily copied it down. Excuse my sentence-composing ability, its rather sad.
Its fun and interesting to make, requiring you to beat the creamed sugar and shortening mixture with the flour and some of he milk for two minutes. I guess this helps to dense up the cake, but I used the process. The end result of that was this
Its a fairly thick mixture, but then you add in your egg whites and milk…
And your vanilla..
And beat for two minutes longer or until homogenized. Its interesting…the batter was really not all that bad either (hee hee). Its a light batter and definately white in color.
Fun to pour, I used a square pan, just because I was making this to prepare some cake balls (that’s what I do with cake anyway, hee hee). And it bakes up evenly and nicely, its nice and moist too.
And purty. It makes some mighty tasty cake balls too. Enjoy this, I shouldn’t have, on account that prom is tomorrow night…Whoops.

Method
-Preheat oven to 350, grease two 9″ round cake pans and set aside
1. Cream shortening and sugar together until well combined.
2. Add flour and salt to sugar alternatively with 3/4 C. milk, beat on MEDIUM speed for two entire minutes. The mixture will be dense.
3. Add in remaining milk with egg whites, vanilla, and baking powder. Beat two minutes more on MEDIUM speed, make sure its homogenized.
4. Pour into pans and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center is clean. Allow to cool in pans for 15 minutes, turn out, and cool completely. Can be iced with your favorite icing! Enjoy!

I’m not saying the box brand because I have no right to. I made this from scratch because I wanted to see if it were possible to make a homemade version of the cake.

It tastes different, but I like it, its good. But the recipe, I looked, made THREE sheet cake pans worth.

THREE.

…

THREE.

That’s too much. So I took the liberty of diving the recipe by three then multiplying that by two to get two-thirds of a recipe. A lot of work, but a lot more forgiving. Three cakes is simply too much! I thought that the cake was pretty good. I’ve never found white cake to be that exciting. I guess that’s why I added almost 1/4 cup of sprinkles to the mix! I also didn’t want to fork out six egg whites (I’ve wasted so many yolks and whites in the past two days, I felt like…awful) so I used powdered egg whites (in accordance to the recommendations on the package. I used 1/4 cup powdered egg whites to 3/4 cup of water in place of the regular egg whites. No difference in taste; I didn’t expect there to be any.

Meh, not that ‘perfect’. But that’s why you crumble it up, add in some cream cheese frosting and extra sprinkles, roll it into balls, and then dip it in chocolate! But that’s just me. I’m that kinda gal.

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour three (TWO FOR THE REMEASURED) 9-by-2-inch round cake pans, tapping out excess flour; set aside.
In a medium bowl, stir together, milk, egg whites, and extracts. Into a second medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed for 30 seconds. With machine running, gradually add the sugar. Continue beating until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl as necessary.
Add one-third of the flour mixture and one-third of the milk mixture, and beat on low speed until just incorporated. Add remaining flour and milk mixtures in 2 separate batches beating between additions to fully incorporate. Scrape down sides of bowl, and stir by hand to finish. Fold in the sprinkles.
Divide batter evenly between prepared pans. Smooth surface with a rubber spatula. Bake until top of cake springs back when lightly pressed and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.
Let cakes cool in pans on wire racks for 5 minutes. Run a small metal spatula around the sides of the pan, and invert cakes onto greased racks. Reinvert cakes onto cooling rack. Let cool completely before filling.

Cream Cheese frosting recipe listed in “Staple Recipes” page.

-Once cooled, crumple cake finely (I pulse in my food processor) and add in 16 ounces of cream cheese frosting and mix thoroughly.
-Roll mixture into balls and refrigerate until firm, about thirty minutes to an hour depending on the size.
-Melt chocolate, adding a bit of oil to make the mixture more fluid. Dip the ball into the chocolate and then lift with a fork, use a spoon to ladle chocolate on top, shake off excess chocolate and transfer truffle to a parchment-lined sheetpan. Repeat until all the balls are covered.
-Refridgerate until chocolate is hard.
-Enjoy!